The field of the invention relates to a variety of chilling and dispensing units which house a variety of bottles. While these patents in the prior art have advantages, they lack the practicality and ease of assembly and use in contrast to the present invention. Most of those in the prior art will contain and refrigerate a bottle but will only dispense the beverage within by manually lifting or tilting the beverage container and housing. The present invention after being loaded will provide a means of supporting the bottle so the beverage will pour out of an adjustable tap with only the touch of a finger like the soda fountains used in restaurants.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,148,682 to Wolf and U.S. Pat. No. 4,338,795 to House Jr. describe devices and methods for forming ice around bottled beverage containers. While these inventions may provide a means of cooling a bottle, they lack a way of being easily transported and probably will not maintain a cool temperature for extended periods of time. They also appear to be difficult to prepare and assemble.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,961,324 to Allan describes a refrigerant container which holds and dispenses bottled beverages in an upright manner through a threaded conduit affixed through the lid which is screwed onto the bottle and the insulated container. While this invention is somewhat conventional, it still does not provide an easy way to dispense beverages and it appears there may be problems associate with screwing the lid onto the bottle and the insulated container at the same time.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,870,837 to Weins describes an insulated vessel having a high heat capacity sidewall with heat conducting fins containing a liquid with a preferred melting point to maintain a certain cool temperature on a bottle of wine. The container is provided with an absorbent layer which wipes moisture off of the bottle when the bottle is removed. This unit seems to be of a good design but fails to provide a good way to transport and dispense the bottled beverage as in the other patents described.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,531,381 to Toro and Valle describes a cooling assembly that will maintain a chilled temperature on a bottled wine or other beverage. While this invention does provide a means of transporting the beverage and other objects associated, it appears to be somewhat awkward. This invention also appears to be costly and difficult to manufacture.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,164,851 to Bryant describes a motorized unit that will rapidly cool a canned or bottled beverage by spinning the beverage container in ice creating a frictional contact with between the container and the ice within the cooling compartment. This unit appears as if it would be functional but it must have an external voltage supply to power the motor within. This would not be convenient if it were desired to use the device in a remote location. Therefore this greatly limits any portability desired.
French Pat. No. 2,327,746 describes a bottle chilling apparatus that comprises of a champagne bucket mounted on a base that will allow the bucket with the bottle within to be swiveled downward to pour champagne into a glass that is set on the base of the unit. This unit would be practical for home use but as the other units mentioned above, it lacks an easy way of being transported to remote locations.
German Pat. No. 222,983 describes a spherically shaped unit that will house and cool a bottled beverage. This invention will probably perform well but it has a somewhat unpleasant design about it. It also lacks a way of dispensing the beverage without having to lift the entire unit up.
While the prior art described above present good methods for chilling bottled or canned beverages, most do not seem to contain any practical ways of carrying beverages to locations where transportability is a must. The units mentioned above that are somewhat portable are too complicated to assemble or too costly to manufacture. The present invention hereof eliminates any of these prior problems.